


The Myth of Happily Ever After

by PerfidiousFate



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M, Homecoming, Making Your Own Home, Oceanic Six
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 07:39:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5997223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerfidiousFate/pseuds/PerfidiousFate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On coming home, motherhood, and forging your own happy ending.</p><p>(Or: Kate and Sayid connect without saying a word.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Myth of Happily Ever After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



> There's two main reasons I wrote this treat: firstly because when I watched Lost a few months ago I started shipping the hell out of Sayid and Kate, these big-hearted, badass, broken, beautiful people, and secondly because I adore your Lost fics. So I really hope you enjoy this short little fic at least somewhat, and overall have a wonderful exchange! <3

Sayid is an enigma.

When the plane crashes and the world falls apart - and Kate slips out of her handcuffs, ties up her hair and runs like she always does - everyone falls into a pattern. Shannon tans, Sawyer gathers up the medicine and lounges like a king, Jack stitches people up and broods. Locke starts hunting, Sun grows a garden and smiles at people whose words she doesn’t understand, and Michael bends over backwards to look after his kid.

Sayid doesn’t follow anyone’s script. He does what he does. He yells at people for being selfish assholes, fixes the radio, and nearly tortures Sawyer. He’s kind to her before and after everyone finds out about the blood on her hands. 

Because of this, Kate likes him. She enjoys spending time with him while they build something new or fix something old, or just try to survive this awful, wonderful, unnatural place. He’s a calming influence on her; she smiles without meaning to when he speaks in that slow, thoughtful way he has.

That’s why, when the plane lands and the Oceanic Six exit, blinking with the light and the emotion, Kate goes to him instead of anyone else. The cameras flash, and all her friends are half-laughing, half-crying as they hug their mothers. Kate’s mother isn’t here. She swallows down disappointment and that old, familiar grief, and hugs Aaron closer to her chest. He coos at her, and it eases the pressure in her chest just a little bit.

But Sayid’s mother isn’t there either, and Kate likes him, so instead of standing there alone with her murder charges and someone else’s baby, she steps closer. Hurley had apparently adopted Sayid, because his mother is hugging the life out of him. Sayid looks awkward, but he’s hugging her back.

“Oh!” Hurley says when he notices her, and his smile is sweet as it always is. “Mom, mom, this is Kate. And her, uh, her Aaron. She’s my friend too.” 

Hurley’s mother lets go of Sayid a few seconds later - he steps back with an awkward smile - and she very obviously sizes Kate up. Evidently she approves, because before Kate manages to paste on even a pale shadow of a smile, she and Aaron are enveloped in a warm, fierce hug.

The next few minutes are an emotional, overwhelming blur. Hurley’s father hugs her too, and Jack’s mother comes over to squeeze her tightly and coo over Aaron. Sun’s parents don’t hug her, but her father clasps her arm and then Sun is hugging her too, burying her face in Kate’s shoulder and blinking back tears for her missing husband that she can’t let fall right now.

It’s all too much, too fast - Kate had spent months with a set group of people, learning them inside and out - but Sayid is right there beside her, looking just as discomfited and dazzled as her, so it makes it okay. He pats her shoulder and gives her a smile that’s small but warm as all hell, and it’s like the sun the way it warms Kate up to the very core.

It’s crazy, she thinks, it’s crazy, but she thinks she’s going to be okay.

* * *

Later, without saying a word, Sayid falls into step with her as she walks away from a press conference. They share something, the murderer and the torturer with no family who fought like hell to help the others on the island. They know each other, who they are in their bones, in a way they don’t ever have to verbalize.

It’ll take a while for it to really coalesce. It’ll take the death of the woman Sayid looked for for so long that she became his entire world, and the implosion of that fragile thing Kate shared with Jack. 

But when it does, when Sayid shows up at her doorstep with shadows under his eyes, a gun tucked into his belt and ghosts under his fingertips - when Kate opens the door, somebody else’s baby and her baby all at once asleep in another room, the light of her life - she lets him in. And then she lets him in again, and lets him in again, and months later when they kiss for the first time, it’s like coming home.

Sayid’s still an enigma, still different than anyone Kate had ever known before. But she doesn’t have to understand his quirks, his trauma, his nobility - just like he doesn’t have to understand her quirks, her trauma, the house on fire and the mother who fears her - to get him. They understand each other well enough to build something new, and fix something old, and fight like hell against crazy, terrifying, beautiful things like the island.

She still has to run. The island and their pasts won’t let any of them go that easily, and Claire is still out there, somewhere. But with Aaron in her arms and Sayid at her side, with that calm, warm smile, it doesn’t feel like running. Not anymore.

Neither she nor Sayid believe in happily-ever-afters. But, hell. They didn’t believe in smoke monsters or time travel either. So who can say? 

Who can say?


End file.
